A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance
- Ilona Oltuski
- Mar 30
- 6 min read
Co-commissioned by the Sejong Soloists, Avner Dorman's new piece offers a musical perspective on a world after October 7. It will be premiered by the Sejong Soloists, Adele Anthony, and Gil Shaham on April 8 at Zankel Hall.
Since its inception in 1994 as Sejong Soloists, Juilliard professor Hyo Kang's entrepreneurial New York City-based chamber ensemble has been built on the premise of unencumbered access to a highly competent, internationally diverse talent pool with flexible configurations.
It began its journey with eleven young string players from eight countries performing at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, followed by their installation as the ensemble-in-residence at the Aspen Music Festival. Throughout its now more than 30-year tradition of international performances in world-renowned venues, including some highlights of cultural markers like the Olympic Torch ceremony at the United Nations for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and the 2018 Olympic Games in PyeongChang, the ensemble has grown into a cultural alliance that offers vibrant collaboratives for its high-caliber star performers and a cutting-edge commissioning partner for new music and innovative projects.
Their recent co-commission for two of today’s foremost violinists, Gil Shaham and Adele Anthony, is A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance by Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman. The 18-minute companion piece to the also programmed J.S. Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor will receive its world premiere at Zankel Hall on April 8.
“The piece has an unusual structure, as it is a concerto in four contrasting movements, slow fast, slow fast, different from the Bach concerto. Two of them are prayer-like laments, and two are very vibrant dances, played without a pause,” describes Dorman. “The most apparent correspondence between the two are their fugal elements. The two violin soloists are constantly in dialogue as equal partners and often unite against the rest of the ensemble.”
The equally important treatment of the voices of its two protagonists perfectly matches the brilliance of the outstanding violinists, Adele Anthony and Gil Shaham, who are also life partners for whom the piece was written.
"Adele and Gil are such captivating performers, and their piece will complement Bach well," Dorman stated in an interview this month. “The primary material in my concerto is melodic and songlike, but it quickly becomes chromatic, spanning the twelve-tone scale. While that may be reminiscent of Bach, it does so with a more pentatonic Middle Eastern character. It reminds me of Bach’s undertones and influence without making it into a fake copy but a Bach-inspired companion piece.”
Gil Shaham grew up in Israel, where he received his early training to become one of the world's leading international soloists. An article from June 2024 in the Jerusalem Post mentioned that Shaham was “eager to go back and visit Israel for the first time since October 7,” describing the Hamas massacre at the Nova Music Festival and Kibbutzim in southern Israel with its ensuing hostage crisis and Israel’s multifront war response. The article describes Shaham as uneasy discussing the political situation, as he comments, “Look, these are tragic times. It’s just an ocean of suffering and tragedy, an ocean of pain. And I do feel that music has a way to bring solace to people.”
An international culture war headed by the anti-colonial BDS movement against Israel had been going on long before October 7. Demonstrations at Israeli cultural events, as well as hostile acts in random Jewish neighborhoods, restaurants, institutions, schools, and synagogues, have since spiked alongside virulent protests at universities. As a result, performances by the State’s national orchestra, the Israeli Philharmonic, and other Jewish international musicians, artists, actors, and dancers with any association with Israel – be it only by name – along with scientists, merchants, writers, and academics have suffered from politicized antizionist/antisemitic boycotts and toxic anti-Israel sentiment.
Shaham recalls recurring protests during his concerts with the IPO. “You know, there was one time when we performed with Zubin Mehta and the Israeli Philharmonic at the BBC Proms, and as we were playing, there were loud protests coming from outside, and even louder counter-protests. I looked at Zubin, and he sort of looked at me and said, ‘Just keep playing, just keep making music.’ I thought that was a good statement on many levels,” shared Shaham in the article above.
As much as keeping one’s head down is an understandable response by a non-politically inclined performing artist, one misses outspoken voices countering those echoing from the Islamists-informed Uber drivers and soccer hooligans in Amsterdam, who harassed fans of the visiting Israeli soccer team.
Following this incident, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw outright canceled the eminent Jerusalem Quartet’s planned concerts at the prestigious music venue out of safety concerns. After wide-reaching complaints and mediations, the concerts were reinstated, but the threat and intimidation were pivotal signs in their reversal of victims and perpetrators. Israeli comedian Yohay Sponder responded humorously, with a heavy Israeli heart and accent: “You know, my shows in Amsterdam have been cancelled; they must have a good reason for that. But since the protests, ticket sales have tripled. I did not even want to make so much money, but now I am even hiring my own protesters…”
As renowned Jewish music critic Joshua Kosman asked during a recent concert by the IPO at San Francisco's Davis Hall, “Can there be no safe space, no carved-out terrain where music exists to gladden our hearts without the intrusion of politics at large?”
As in all of its concerts, the orchestra promotes its allegiance and performs the national anthems of both countries. The Israeli anthem Hatikvah, which translates into “The Hope,” evokes an idealized longing, a difficult-to-describe slightly sentimental view of a spiritual home many Jews share across nations. The Jewish identity and its high hopes for a Jewish homeland where Jews can practise Judaism freely is perhaps as much defined by its antisemitic history and survival of the Holocaust as by the cultural, if not religiously inspired, love for and identification with the ancient Jewish homeland of Eretz Israel.
Kosman explains his publicly-debated choice of whether to attend the concert to readers, many of whom may favor following the calls to boycott it. He follows suit, "feeling ashamed" of the Israeli government's unabashed military response and because, as he states, “music as a cultural activity is inextricably enmeshed with everything we do.”
As he describes following his convictions and joining the anti-Israel stance of protesters outside, one wonders why, with such a hand in moral clarity, he fails to mention any ethical response for the atrocities of October 7, the worst massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, nor any obligation for the return of the remaining hostages–Israelis, and other nationals, held to this day. Do their lives not matter? Are they forever lost to the narrow narrative of context that fits within a one-sided perspective of an agenda that goes back to the founding of the Israeli nation-state?
Kosman is prepared for others to feel alienated by his stance, especially other Jews, but lacks the very nuance he claims to impart. It is true, though, that like life and politics, music evokes emotions, which in turn can inspire political activism.
And vice versa. On a personal level, Dorman's intense inner dialectic of his composition is closely related to “what has been a tremendously difficult time,” he says, referencing October 7 and its barbaric impact that seemed to have shattered any provisional hope for reconciliation. A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance is perhaps best described as an attempt to approach this pain, searching for a way forward that carries the biblical component of consolation into the music’s context born out of its times of war.
“At first, I kept discussing it with my wife and did not fully grasp the direction the piece developed and its connection to what I needed to express. The tragic events have created a sobering new reality for Jewish communities in Israel and beyond,” explains Dorman. “So much trauma that we all lived through and that affected everyone I know, in both a global sense but also in the most personal one,” he says.
The concerto’s title refers to King Solomon’s observations of one of the fourteen juxtaposed seasons of life in Ecclesiastes 3:1–8. It refers to the ongoing circle of life marked by its dichotomies, beginnings and endings, ups and downs, gains and losses, each given higher meaning, purpose, and acceptance of their God-appointed decree. The title is a nod to the specific mourning rituals in Jewish tradition that offer solace to the mourner, leading to renewal, healing, hope, and new beginnings.
Get tickets here.
Program:
VIVALDI Trio Sonata in D Minor, Op. 1, No. 12 (Variations on "La Follia")
J. S. BACH Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043
DIAMOND Rounds
J. S. BACH "Air on the G String" from Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068
AVNER DORMAN A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance, Concerto for Two Violins and Strings (World Premiere)
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